Friday, April 5, 2013

Welcome to the Kama Bandha Initiative



What is Kama Bandha?

Kama:

meaning "Love / Desire" in Sanskrit. Kama is the winged Hindu god of love, who is also the son of Lakshmi

Bandha: 

(Sanskrit: binding, bond, arrest, capturing, putting together) is a term often employed in relation to yogic discourse and instruction. The term denotes a binding, lock or bondage that may be either internal or external to the body. Bandha may be defined as a particular focused and intentional action involving pressure, contraction or force on the muscles or some other bodily or sensate phenomena. In yogic traditions, bandha are to be studied, maintained and held principally whilst engaged in pranayama. According to the Himalayan Institute the word has been translated as “fetter, block, check, obstruct, restrain, lock.” In this sense bandha is described as the damming up of a river. But it also translates as “bond, connect, put together, unite, combine, join.” In this sense bandha is described as bridging over a river. http://www.himalayaninstitute.org/yoga-international-magazine/asana-articles/root-lock/

In Jainism, bandha, refers to the karmic process of binding of material karmic particles to the soul consciousness. This bondage is on account of kasaya or passions of the soul. As per ancient Jain text of Tattvarthasutra, bandha is one of the tattva or fundamental truth of this world. As such the samsaric soul is always found in bondage with the karma since time immemorial. Various bandhas are described and elucidated in Yogic texts and discourse. However, rarely is an exegesis of Bandha provided. Bandhas have been described in Hatha Yoga Pradipika in the chapter relating to Mudras. Ten mudra are codified in this treatise. Of marked importance, the chapter describes all bandha as mudra.


In essence, this page is a mixture of all of these definitions --- a personal attempt to awaken the soul, to connect, to bond, to unite all of us in our various stages of ecstasy and grief to produce Kama (Love).

In a world filled with anger, violence, ignorance, and darkness, I feel that it should be a personal duty of each and every one of us to realize the potential light that we have... to show others that happiness is a possibility even with labels such as "depression" or "bipolar".  I believe that negativity breeds off of negativity. In a similar fashion positivity feeds off of positivity. So go out in the world and smile and one person - hold the door for one person - compliment one person. Because at the end of the day, YOU are the rainbow in someone else's cloud. 


No comments:

Post a Comment